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...drove through the smooth harbour water before the steady easterly that flowed seaward summer nights. Ahead, the swelling sails of the high purple-and-gold galleon-clouds of sunset were fading in the west.
Harry eased the jib as they cleared the moles. Toby Bowen pushed the tiller slightly with his fingertips and eased out the main. They headed towards the distant lights of the island. Sunset faded and the mainland lights fell away, surges of phosphorescence began to show.
"Well, here's to adventure!"
"Aye, break out the rum, shipmate."
"She's hogging a little," said Toby. "Come aft a couple of feet."
Harry shifted. The dinghy's bows rose a few inches and she settled down to a walking pace through the small waves.
"Look at those stars now."
"You forget, don't you?"
"Well, this is what we came for."
"This view can't have changed for sailors for a while."
"Thanks for suggesting this, Toby," said Harry. "It was a good idea."
"We're powering along, aren't we?" Toby waved back over the tiller. The land seemed a long way away. The fourteen-foot dinghy was alone in a blackness suddenly vast. Harry reminded himself that Toby was a yachtsman of great experience. There was no reason why his striking physical resemblance to the skipper in Gilligan's Island should prove an omen of shipwreck. Ahead was the blink of the island's lighthouse. Silver points touched waves. Behind them a full moon was rising, almost searchlight bright. "I'm glad you were able to come, Harry. It's good to be able to share this with someone."
"I know what you mean. Like the self-educated landlord in Poet's Pub. What did he say: 'I really like a pleasant evening's sodomy.' 'That's sodality, you fool!' cried the outraged guest. Anyway, we've got pleasanter circumstances for sodality here."
"Do you want to take her for a while?"
"All right, but keep an eye on me."
"Just head for the main lighthouse. We'll pick up the leading lights long before we're anywhere near the reefs."
"Yes, but I don't want us to broach to and go over if the wind shifts."
"Funny, a small boat at sea in the dark can still be a scary place, can't it? Even with city lights behind us."
"Watch it."
They changed places. After a few moments of over-activity at the tiller Harry found that the Corsair virtually steered herself though the dark. The moon in the sail and the phosphorescence running away from the bow gave the night a ghostly radiance.
"She's a little sweetheart," said Toby, "just give her her head. You'll find she's as graceful and willing a sailer as you can hope for. They knew how to build boats when they built this one ... Swan River mahogany," he went on dreamily, "over a hundred years old, and the lines can't be improved on. Someone at your university could do a paper on her."
"I don't think I'd want them to."
"Early West Australian naval architects, when the river was the major transport artery, all the way up to the first vineyards. There's a story there, you know. They knew how to give a boat perfect lines on the old Swan River ..."
"Yes, but ..." Harry sought for words. Toby was a self-taught mechanical engineer and smallish businessman: boats, concrete, welding and construction all came easily to his hand, though a romantic streak the width of a barn door worked against his success as an entrepreneur. Like many who had never been to a university, even now he cherished old-fashioned and idealised images of them. When Harry had been awarded his doctorate and had decided, half against his better judgment, to attend the graduation ceremony, Toby and his wife had given him a party at their house, and been delighted to photograph each other with him in his scarlet-striped gown.
"This is our boat--well, your boat, of course. Let them get their own. I don't want to see her made an industry."
"There's so much a Department of Maritime Studies could write about here," Toby said. "People don't realise how much maritime history connects up. This coast is full of mysteries."
"I don't doubt it. They're lobbying for a grant to hire a deep-sea research vessel to look for the wreck of the Darwin right now," Harry said. "The Head of the Department is trying to prove it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. I don't come under him."
"I've never thought there was too much in that," said Toby mildly.
"It supports an industry. How much can you spend looking for a corvette missing since 1941? Plenty!"
"Do it without them, then."
"I wouldn't mind. But between teaching and trying to build up the practice I haven't a lot of time to spare at the moment. I've been looking forward to this trip."
"You shouldn't take on too much. We only live once."
The windmill beacons passed. Capricorn Corsair was alone, heading for the distant line of lights.
The spouting reefs, topped by red beacons, walked by. There was the elevation of Thompson's rock, roosting gulls a white powdering on its flattened top. In the lee of the island, wind and waves dropped and they ghosted through the witch-lit, moon-silvered water under the lighthouse's great silver wheel.
The sound of the sea changed beneath then, the keel surged through the shallows to the beach sand of First Island. Toby leapt ashore with the painter and dropped a clove-hitch over a tree stump with two...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
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